Posted on 06/18/2010 7:01:52 AM PDT by blam
China's Monster Three Gorges Dam Is About To Slow The Rotation Of The Earth
Cutler Cleveland, The Energy Watch
Jun. 18, 2010, 9:23 AM
The Myth: The filling of the reservoir behind Three Gorges Dam in China changed the rotation of the Earth.
The Evidence: Three Gorges Dam, China crosses the Yangtze River in Hubei province, China. It the world’s largest hydroelectric power station by total capacity, which will be 22,500 MW when completed. When the water level is maximum at 175 meters (574 ft) over sea level (91 meters (299 ft) above river level), the reservoir created by the dam is about 660 kilometers (410 mi) in length and 1.12 kilometers (0.70 mi) in width on average. The total surface area of the reservoir is 1045 square kilometers, and it will will flood a total area of 632 square kilometers, of land. The reservoir will contain about 39.3 cu km (9.43 cubic miles) of water. That water will weigh more than 39 trillion kilograms (42 billion tons).
A shift in a mass of that size would affect the rotation of the Earth due to a phenomena known as the moment of inertia, which is the inertia of a rigid rotating body with respect to its rotation. The moment of inertia of an object about a given axis describes how difficult it is to change its angular motion about that axis. The longer the distance of a mass to its axis of rotation, the slower it will spin. You may not know it, but you see examples of this in everyday life. For example, a figure skater attempting to spin faster will draw her arms tight to her bodies
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The Verdict: True.
This is a guest post from The Energy Watch.
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(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Without going to the site, do they get around to mentioning how small the change will be?
I was hoping for an extra half hour to hour of sleep
I change the rate the earth spins with just a liter of bourbon.
LOnger work days.... Obama sees this as greater tax revenue.
So when we tested nukes underground in the fifties, did we create a giant jet stream and move OUR axis/rotation/trajectory by popping that pimple?
0.06 microseconds per day.
When the dam breaks and causes a rapid acceleration of the earth everyone standing will fall over.
OK, 600 square kilometers, lets rough that out and call it 200 square miles, which is a piece of dirt 10 miles by 20 miles.
Don’t get me wrong. But I’m betting there have been plenty of years when the Cascade mountains in Or/Wa and BC have had like 40-70 foot base of snow on them.
And the Cascades add up to a little more than 20 square miles.
I’m just fudging around a bit, but seems to me there are other things that in the greater scheme make this into small potatoes.
WHAT AM I GOING TO DO WITH ALL THIS SPARE TIME???!?
Longer days means more global warming!................
I saw a documentary about that fact some time ago. Can’t remember when and I don’t know what they did about it.
60 nanoseconds is a long time for some people..........
Didn’t Superman do that by flying around Earth real fast the wrong way?
Add in the interaction between the earth and moon and really mess with your figures.
I believe the moon/earth/tide action is slowing the earth down and sending the moon further away.
*snort*
Wikipedia
Structural integrity
A number of concerns have arisen about the possibly inadequate structural stability of the dam itself. Several days after the first filling of the reservoir, around 80 visible cracks were observed in the dam’s structure.[91][92] The cracks were described to be “hairline” despite their size and depth.[93] The submerged spillway gates of the dam pose a risk of cavitation,[94] which is similar to the cavitation that destroyed the spillways of the Glen Canyon Dam in the floods of 1983.
The Three Gorges Dam Project Corporation responded to the criticism of the dam integrity, saying that the project quality is under control over its 17 years of construction. Around 163,000 concrete units of the dam all passed the quality test. After filling of the reservoir, the dam deformation was within the design limit. The right side of the dam is free of cracks, which is a significant achievement of the project. An experts group gave the project overall a good rating in terms of quality
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